Resilience

My wife, Melinda, gave a card to me about a year ago with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”

The card sits on my desk and is a helpful reminder that, when faced with even the most difficult decisions, the answers – or at least the road map that leads to those answers – can be found within ourselves.

I thought of the Emerson quote again earlier this week when John Scardina was speaking at the PTO meeting about raising resilient children. In his usual thoughtful and caring way, John acknowledged the natural inclination that many of us have, when our children are faced with challenges, to tell them what to do or to fix the problem for them. Our actions may be well-intentioned. After all, we want our children to be happy, don’t we? However, our taking care of problems for them can actually have the opposite effect in the long-run, keeping our children from developing the resiliency and skills needed to handle difficult decisions as adults.

So, what should we parents do? John’s advice for raising resilient children has been published twice, first back in February by examiner.com. The December issue of Good Housekeeping magazine includes John’s “Resilience Rules” which can be found on his blog.

Helping students develop resiliency and problem solving skills is something our teachers do every day. At this fall’s Back to School Night I had the pleasure of sitting in T. Claire’s room as the parent of a fourth grader, listening to her speak about the importance of resiliency and describing how her routines and expectations serve to cultivate it in her students. I wasn’t watching the clock, but I believe Claire spent more time speaking about building this and other life skills than she did about math and reading – and that was just fine with me.

When I first came to West Chester Friends School ten years ago, one of the primary draws for me was the quality of the faculty and the strength of the academic program they create. Experiencing the school as a parent, as I have for the past six years, my appreciation continues to grow for the ways that our teachers nurture “what lies within.”